The Literati Cousins
by Dottie Snark
Summary: Weeks after the wedding Luke and Lorelai's family gather for the holidays. While Jess and Rory talk plans for Rory's book, April gets it into her head that the two are perfect for each other. Written for the r/fanfiction subreddit January Prompt Challenge. One shot.


**A/N: This fic was written for the r/fanfiction January Prompt Challenge on Reddit. I was given three random words: Cousin, Literacy, and Insist. Since Jess and Rory's ship name is Literati, and they're technically cousins now (step-cousins, no incest!), I knew they were perfect for the prompt.**

* * *

"I've sent you a list of agents to query," Jess said to Rory. They sat at a corner table in Luke's, taking full advantage of free coffee while Jess looked over the first few chapters of Rory's manuscript. "Should be in your email. Write up a draft letter and I'll give it a look over next. Hopefully, we can start querying agents by next month."

"Shouldn't I have the whole book done first?" Rory asked. She had a good chunk of her memoir done, but it was still going to need a couple more weeks of work at the very least."

Jess shook his head. "First-time fiction authors need a complete draft, but this is non-fiction. You just need to show them you've got a story worth telling. If you don't finish before you get an agent they might even be able to help you navigate the market to figure out which stories and anecdotes are best to include. Keep working on the book, and let's get the first few chapters in the best shape we can, but our focus needs to be on finding an agent. It's a great story, but we need to find someone to market it right. Marketing is key."

A smile graced Rory's lips. It was so nice to see Jess at work. He had come a long way since his teenage 'rebel without a cause' days. Now he was an expert in his field, a field that they were both passionate about.

The bell above the entryway jingled and April entered, carrying weeks worth of luggage. Winter break had come for the young college student, along with her entire wardrobe. She dropped her luggage by Jess and Rory's table, took a seat across from them and put her head down. "Why did I think working full time and attending grad school—also full time—was a good idea?"

"Good work ethic?" Rory said.

"Insanity?" Jess said.

April looked up at him and glared.

"What? You could never catch me up in an 'Institute of Higher Learning'. I barely got my GED. I think you're both insane." He went back to editing.

April sat all the way up, and her eyes settled on her big sister. Well, technically step big sister, but April had started thinking of Rory as a sister long ago, long before their parents even got married. "Dad told me you're working on a book."

Rory nodded. "Yeah. Jess is helping me edit and find an agent."

"Oh, that's nice. Did dad arrange this? Getting you two to work together, that is."

Rory shook her head. "Jess actually gave the book idea. He was checking out my digs at the Gazette and I was ranting about how direction-less I felt and bam! Direction found."

A small smirk appeared on Jess's lips but he didn't take his eyes off the manuscript.

"Really? I didn't know you two were that close. Well, that's good. I always thought you two should get along. You have a lot in common."

"Are you kidding?" Rory said with a laugh. "Jess and I are old friends. Since high school. We just don't see each other too often because of the distance. It's not often that we're both in town at the same time, at least until I moved back last year."

"Did you two become friends when Dad and Lorelai started dating?" she asked. Apparently, there were some holes in April's version the Gilmore/Danes family timeline."

Finally, Jess looked up, and mouth the words 'what?' before he spoke. "April. You do know Rory and I used to date, right?"

"What?!" April's eyes went wide.

Rory and Jess shared a chuckle.

"Oh yeah," Rory continued. "We were like Luke and Lorelai long before Luke and Lorelai actually became a thing."

April stared at them in shock. Her cousin and sister dated?! Is that allowed? Isn't that against the law? Or at least social norms? She couldn't form any words for a long time. Jess went back to editing. Rory had to speak up again in order to break April's trance.

"Sorry," she said. "We thought you knew. It wasn't like some big secret."

"But you're cousins!" April said.

"Step-cousins," Jess said without lifting his eyes.

"Does Dad and Lorelai know?"

Jess sighed and put the pen down. There was no work getting down until April moved past this. "Of course they know. We were in high school. And they both threatened me a number of times about what they would do to me if I treated Rory wrong. I think Luke more than Lorelai, actually."

"Luke was always really protective," Rory agreed.

April's eyes continued to switch between her cousin and sister. They dated? Seriously? Why? What made them like each other like that? And why didn't it work out? Everything she thought about these two changed. They were no longer Jess, her cousin, and Rory, her sister; they were a couple who's mysterious romance needed to be unraveled.

* * *

A little while later Jess and Rory helped April bring her bags back to the Gilmore house. It was the first time the entire family was in town for the holidays in many years, so things were a bit tight, but Luke and Lorelai wanted to celebrate their first Christmas as newly weds with everyone. Rory and April would be staying in the living room once Emily arrived, who'd sleep in Rory's old bed. Meanwhile, Jess was staying at Liz's, which is where he went after April's things were dropped off.

Luke and Lorelai were out, leaving the two sisters alone, and April had one thing on her mind: prying into her big sister's love life. "So I had no idea you and Jess used to be a thing," April said as she unpacked a couple of things out of the bags. She was staying at Luke and Lorelai's house until a few days after New Years, then heading back west, to New Mexico this time, to spend the rest of winter break with her mom. At the end of January she'd return to Stanford and her internship in Silicon Valley.

"Are you still hung up on that?" Rory asked. She was already munching on a box of pop tarts from the kitchen and didn't lift a pinky to help her little sister.

"Obviously. There's so much that happened with this family before I joined. So many things you never talk about. Come on! Sisters are supposed to talk boys. But I don't think you've ever told me about a single boyfriend. When was the last time you were in a relationship?"

That question was harder to answer than it should have been. She dated Paul for the last couple years, but she barely counted that as a relationship. They saw each other so little that she even forgot to break up with him all of last year. And then there was Logan…that was more than complicated, especially now.

Both were over, though.

"How do you define a relationship?" Rory asked.

"Oh boy!" April tossed her shirts aside and sat down on the couch, her legs crisscrossed and her back against the armrest. She patted the cushion in front of her.

Apparently, they were having girl-talk. And if Rory knew anything about April's stubbornness it was that April would not be stopped until she got _all_ the answers, and then some.

"Your life must be so adventurous if you need that word defined. Okay, so, like, who was the last guy you had any kind of romance with."

"April, that's really personal."

April bit her lip. "Oh…you don't want to tell me?"

There was a pang in Rory's heart. This poor girl wanted to connect so badly. How could Rory just turn her away? "Okay, I guess I'll tell you _a little_ about my love life. A lot of it is ending up in the book anyway, so I've been thinking about it a lot. My last boyfriend was this guy named Paul…but we didn't really connect that well. We barely even saw each other. Broke up a few weeks ago." There was no way she was getting into the Logan details with April. Not right now, at least.

"Oh! I'm so sorry." April leaned in to hug Rory but Rory shook her off.

"Really not upset. We both knew there was no potential there. It's better anyway. I've got way too much going on right now."

"Like your book."

"Among things."

There was a long, awkward silence.

"Gonna tell me any of those things?"

"Eventually," Rory said. "I promise. I just need to work them out by myself a little longer. You get that, right?"

"I guess so…I guess I keep some stuff private, just in my diary."

"But I can answer your questions about Jess."

April's face lit up. "Oh my God! What was he like in high school? How did you fall in love? Why did it end?" Her questions came a mile a minute.

"I never said we were in love."

"So you didn't love him? Is that why you broke up with him?"

"I did love him!" Rory fought back. "And I didn't break up with him!" Old wounds tore open. She hadn't gotten to the Jess chapters in her book yet. She had forgotten how raw those emotions felt. She loved Jess, with all her heart, and he left her. Abandoned her without saying goodbye. _Multiple times_. She gave him so many chances and he broke her heart again and again.

But that was fifteen years ago. He was a different person now. So was she.

She took a deep breath and remembered it was the old Jess she was mad at, not the current one. Besides, it wasn't like she never broke his heart either. After he got his act together and crushed all his hopes and dreams of them getting back together with one poorly thought out kiss.

"Jess left you?" April asked, her voice squeaky and timid now.

"It was a long time ago."

"I just didn't think Jess was that kind of guy."

Rory took another deep breath. She shouldn't be the one to get into Jess's baggage. If Jess wanted April to know about his past then he should be the one to tell her. "Jess was a troubled teenager," Rory admitted. "But he turned his life around. He turned it around a _long_ time ago. Before you even met him. He's a good guy now. Beside, I did some of the hurting too. I don't hold any anger toward him about what happened. Not anymore. I like the man he turned into. I'm friends with the man he turned into. If you want to know more about what happened then talk to Jess, but let's just say he's a good man now, and leave it at that."

And so April let Rory leave it at that. But she didn't let Jess.

* * *

_Ding-dong!_

"Oh April, I didn't know you were visiting already!" Liz squealed when she answered the door. She gave her niece a huge hug and pulled her into the house.

Jess sat on one of three couches in Liz's living room, reading a book.

"Jess, look who's here. It's your cousin!"

"Saw her earlier," Jess said without taking his eyes off his book.

"What? Why didn't you tell me?" Liz badgered.

Jess put his book down while rolling his eyes. Luckily, annoyance was all he felt. Fifteen years ago such a statement would have caused a fight between the mother and son.

"I literally just got here," April said. "Went by the diner, Jess and Rory helped me bring my stuff to Dad's and then I unpacked. Came here to see you as soon as I could, Auntie Liz."

"Have you eaten lunch?" Liz asked, fawning over the girl like she was a puppy. Her maternal instinct had been in overdrive ever since Doula was born. Sometimes Jess got jealous over how motherly she acted toward everyone, even though he got the brunt of it nowadays too. It's the lack of that instinct during Jess's younger years that got him.

"At the diner with Jess and Rory," April answered.

"Dessert?" Liz asked.

"There was talk of pie but it never came to fruition."

"I'll make a pie! What kind, apple or…actually, I think I only have the ingredients for apple."

"Don't make a pie," Jess said from the couch.

"I don't have any pie crust though…I'll just pop into Doose's and be back in a jiffy." She reached for her purse.

"You don't have too—" April couldn't even finish her sentence before Liz was out the door. "Wow…sometimes I forget how…"

"Flighty she is?" Jess finished.

"She's just eccentric."

"Only rich people get to be eccentric." Jess went back to his book, but April was having none of that. She sat down next to him on the couch with a big grin.

"What?" he asked flatly without looking up.

"Can we talk?"

Another long sigh. Jess put his book down at stared blankly at his little cousin.

"So Rory and I were talking—"

"This can't be good, can it?"

"—and we were talking about things in her book, so it's not like I was prying or anything—"

"Right."

"Anyway, we got onto the topic of ex-boyfriends, you know, girl stuff."

"I don't like where this is going, April."

"Anyway, since I just found out that you two are exes—"

"April," Jess warned, his words getting stern.

"—I asked her about you."

"This is prying."

"She told me you two broke up but wouldn't give me details and told me I should ask you."

"No."

April's lower lip trembled. Her manipulation tactics were almost as good as the Gilmores.

"Stop making that face."

"I just want to know about my family. You and Rory had this whole history I had no idea about. I've known you both for ten years and I had no idea. No one ever talks about it."

"Because there's nothing to talk about," Jess said, exasperated.

"Nothing to talk about, or a big, giant elephant no one wants to talk about."

"Rory and I were fifteen years ago. Drop it."

April sat back on the couch, pouting. "It just never occurred to me that there was this thing there. Like, I always thought of you two as family, because you're both my family. You're my cousin and she's my sister. But you two aren't actually each other's family. And if I had never thought of you two as being related before…well, I probably would have thought you'd make a good couple. You're both writers, literacy fanatics, almost as smart as me—"

"If you were the smart cousin you would have dropped this 10 minutes ago."

"I've only been here five minutes," April said.

"Exactly."

"Jess, come on. Tell me about what happened," April insisted. "Why didn't it work out? Please!"

"Drop it!" Jess yelled. "It was fifteen fucking years ago. I broke her heart and I've never forgiven myself for that. My life was shit, I was a shitty person and I treated her like shit. It's the biggest regret of my life so could you stop throwing this all in my face."

"Oh," April said.

Finally, she dropped it. Jess's heartbeat slowed down and he went back to his book. April still didn't take her eyes off him, though. As his righteous indignation faded it was instead replaced with regret. He never should have yelled at April like that. Just goes to show how little he's grown.

"Can I just say one more thing?" April asked.

Jess sighed. "As long as it's not about Rory."

"It's not…I just want you to know I don't think you're a shitty person. I don't know what you did in the past but I've known you since I was thirteen and you've been a good person since at least then. Better than a good person. Whatever you did back then you need to forgive yourself for it, because you're not a bad person anymore."

* * *

April's words stayed with Jess. She was right. He wasn't the same person he was in high school; the same person who meddled into Rory's relationship then treated her like dirt once they got together; the same person who left time after time, leaving her heart repetitively broken; the same person who could barely take care of himself, nevermind the love of his life. And she was the love of his life. No one he had been with since had even held a candle to Rory Gilmore.

After the fight with April Jess found himself walking around Stars Hollow. Memories came back in flashes. Some good. Some not so good. All the fights, all the arguments, all the anger. But also all the laugh, hugs and kisses. He remembered and every place he and Rory hid for a quick make out session, or to just get away from things and read together.

Eventually he found himself on Rory's porch. Before he even thought about what he was doing he knocked on the door.

Rory answered.

"Hi," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, and looked at the ground. It felt like he was back in high school, talking to the unobtainable girl he had such a huge crush on.

"Hey," she said. She looked just as awkward as he felt, with her shoulders hunched over and her hands squeezing each other.

"So…April said some things," Jess said.

"Yeah, she said some things to me too."

"Needs to learn to mind her own business." He leaned against the door.

"She's just curious. I don't blame her. She came into the family with so much history and we never really gave her a summary."

"What happened between us is private."

"Not really," Rory said. "It was pretty popular town gossip back in the day. I'm actually surprised no one ever mentioned it in front of her before."

"But it was a long time ago," Jess said.

"It doesn't feel that long ago."

No, it didn't. Sure it was half their lives ago, but does anyone ever get over their first love? The only love in Jess's case. But it wasn't the same for Rory. He wasn't her first, nor was he her last. She had a full romantic life, one Jess was never able to achieve. He wasn't jealous, he just wished one day she would come back to him.

"You ever wonder why we never got back together?" Jess asked.

"We almost did," Rory reminded him. "A couple times. Timing just never was right."

"That was a big problem for Luke and Lorelai. They worked it out."

"Jess, I—"

"Look, I get if you don't think you could ever trust me again, but—"

"I'm pregnant."

Silence hung over them.

"What?" Jess asked. He must have misheard something. His ears were playing tricks on him. This couldn't be happening. Not just as he had gotten his hopes up that maybe the could have another chance.

"I'm pregnant," she repeated. "You're right about timing never working out. It didn't work out in high school or college. It didn't work out when I went to see you in Philly. And it's not working out right now. I'm sorry Jess."

Jess frowned. He was too late. She already had someone else. "So the father…"

"It's complicated. I told him but…but he's engaged to another woman. He's staying with her."

"Piece of shit," Jess mumbled.

"It's not his fault," Rory said. "He didn't sign up for this. Stuff happens. I'll be okay. I'm focusing on the book for now, then I'll figure out what to do next."

"You shouldn't have to do this alone."

"I'm not. I have mom. And Luke. I'll be okay."

Silence hung over them again. Finally Jess found the words that were in his heart. "I'm all in, Rory. If you'll have me."

"What? No. Jess I can't ask you to do that. I'm having another man's baby."

"You're not asking. Rory, I love you. I've loved you since the day we've met and I've never stopped. I was just too scared to say anything until April insisted on talking about the past. Our past. If any part of you still has feelings for me then I want to give it a shot. I know exactly what I'm signing up for and I'm okay with that. I'm here for you." He took a step forward. There heads were inches apart. "I love you."

Logan would never be out of the picture, not with this baby around. But he would also never be hers again. She needed to move on. And maybe moving on was giving the man she loved so long ago a second chance. Slowly, she nodded. "Let's give it a try then."

With that, Jess leaned and once again kiss the love of his life.


End file.
